I finished Dead Ever After. As suspected, it was really predictable. I would say it was only marginally better than book 10 (I think that was the terrible one - they all kinda meld together after a while). It was a quick, fluffy read, which is what I wanted, but I agree with the person who said they were basically relieved when they finished. I hope Charlaine Harris goes back to the Aurora Teagarden series.

I'm now reading The Great Gatsby. I read it in high school, but that was a long damn time ago, and I barely remember anything about it, so I'm counting it as a new read.

_________________A pie eating contest is a battle with no losers. - amandabear

I was just talking about The Great Gatsby, rachell37! I might read it next. I can't remember if I actually read it in high school or if I just faked it. Some days I feel like I'll never finish Wolf Hall. I'm enjoying it, but I really need to get through it at this point.

_________________I would eat Dr. Cow pocket cheese in a second. I would eat it if you hid it under your hat, or in your backpack, but not if it was in your shoe. That's where I draw the line. -allularpunk

I'm almost finished The Bone Collector (Deaver). Gave up on Rimrock after a few chapters, but I'll probably come back to it next time I'm in an odd enough mood.

Then I think it's time to reread Sister Carrie. It's been 5-6 years. I wonder if I'll love it as much as I always do.

My reading is kind of frenetic lately. I feel like I need a relaxing book that I won't tear through as quickly. I've read a lot of good (fluff mostly) books in the past two weeks, but my brain is starting to spin.

_________________"This is the creepiest post ever if you don't know who Molly is." -Fee"a vegan death match sounds like something where we all end up hugging." -LisaPunk

I just got Player One by Douglas Coupland and Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin from the library and am pretty pumped about both! Flowers for Algernon has indeed made me almost cry a few times...only a few pages left in that one. Excellent read, though.

_________________But if one were to tickle Pluto, I suspect that it might very quietly laugh. - pandacookie

55k usd is like 4 cad or whatever equivalent in beavers you use on the island - joshua

Finished The Great Gatsby. I found it much more interesting and understandable than the last time I read it.

I just finished reading it for the first time; it was one of those that somehow slipped through the cracks (I never had it assigned in HS or undergrad, did all English/British literature for grad school coursework, and wasn't bowled over by other Fitzgerald I'd read). Anyway, "stuff I haven't but should have read" is sort of the theme of my summer fun reading, so I finally picked it up.

Given its iconic status in the American literary canon, I have to admit to being pretty underwhelmed; while the prose is occasionally quite beautiful, my ultimate feeling about the novel was, "So what?" If the narrator's point is the hollowness/artificiality/impossibility of meaningful human connection or "authentic" identity, why should we be any more interested in Carraway's reminiscences about fundamentally empty characters than in the characters themselves? And in terms of playing with form, temporality, narration, etc., contemporary British modernists like Ford, Woolf, and (most experimentally) Joyce were doing similar things, but in much more interesting ways. Now I'm onto Katherine Mansfield's short stories, which are roughly contemporary and pretty delicious, and after that is Never Let Me Go, which I've never read despite being a huge Ishiguro fan.

I finally finished Lost Everything, by Brian Francis Slattery. I thought it was beautiful and strange and sad (like his other books), but my attention span is so ridiculous it took me something like 5 weeks to get through it.

I love all these new Great Gatsby readers! Is the resurgence/your interests in the novel anything to do with the movie? I re-read half of it after coming home from the movie a couple of weeks ago but I still haven't finished it but I've read it a bajillion times awready so no matter. I have a book "College of One" I picked up at the bookstore last week, written by Sheila Graham (FSF's love/companion at the time of his death) and it's about how he educated her, creating a syllabus from books that influenced him, etc. I'm just sort of picking through it, a couple of chapters in. It's not the most fascinating book but a must for FSF minutae lovers, like me

Desdemona wrote:

Given its iconic status in the American literary canon, I have to admit to being pretty underwhelmed; while the prose is occasionally quite beautiful, my ultimate feeling about the novel was, "So what?" If the narrator's point is the hollowness/artificiality/impossibility of meaningful human connection or "authentic" identity, why should we be any more interested in Carraway's reminiscences about fundamentally empty characters than in the characters themselves? And in terms of playing with form, temporality, narration, etc., contemporary British modernists like Ford, Woolf, and (most experimentally) Joyce were doing similar things, but in much more interesting ways.

Yes, Daisy is a particularly hollow character. And Jordan. And all the party-goers. In fact, everyone pretty much except for Mr. Wilson, NC (I suppose by virtue of his insight into the true nature of Gatsby because we only know about Nick relative to Gatsby) and Gatsby are the "careless people" (also, that other guy, the only one who shows up at the funeral and, Dorothy Parker anecdote here. You remember how one of the people who attended Gatsby's funeral stood over his body and said "The poor son of a bisque." That's what Dorothy Parker said, standing over Fitzgerald's body at his wake: "The poor son of a bisque.")

For me, what sets FSF apart is his romanticism. I've been reading Nabakov lately (or is it Nabokov?) and falling in love with him and thinking long and hard why I love FSF so when I can find writing stylists equally admirable in their own fashion and it's that romanticism, for me, that cements FSF in my heart. That unmistakeable Keatsian influence that runs through both Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby.

When you think about the premise of the Great Gatsby though, it's pretty damn juvenile: Diehard dreamer so in love with this girl he corrupts himself (only superficially--never corrupts himself spiritually) to get rich quick and buy a grand mansion conveniently across the way from her and throws lavish parties so she'll notice him and one day find him again. Ridiculous, right? And right next door, conveniently, is this woman's cousin and an entree into his beloved woman's world. Most importantly, all the corruption that surrounds him that he propogates, in a way, can't touch Gatsby's untouchable romantic heart and he dies innocent never knowing that his heart's about to be broken, anyway, by Daisy and she's going to stay with Tom (indicated by the fried chicken scene at the end of the book) and he's still watching over her right up until the end and holding her up as his golden girl and he dies never knowing he really can't repeat the past after all. Most writers wouldn't dare attempt such romantic frivolty. Re-reading that, that's in the back of my mind...this is RIDICULOUS, so immature--who does this? But I love it. I love it.

From what I remember of Gatsby there is no doubt that the superficiality of the characters is evident and intentional. I remember loving Fitzgerald in my youth largely because of the "pretty people and places" and not being offended by how empty most of the vessels were. I don't know that I would appreciate that as much now. I just finished rereading Brideshead Revisited and had much the same reaction to many of the characters (Julia Flyte, Celia Ryder etc) as Desdemona had to the Gatsby characters. I also loved this book and the miniseries etc when I was much younger. So perhaps I am just less romantic these days Sniff sniff.

I now moved on to Mystic River. Not much pretty or romantic here so probably will be a good contrast.

_________________formerly known as gwgredux...if you are keeping track.

From what I remember of Gatsby there is no doubt that the superficiality of the characters is evident and intentional. I remember loving Fitzgerald in my youth largely because of the "pretty people and places" and not being offended by how empty most of the vessels were. I don't know that I would appreciate that as much now. I just finished rereading Brideshead Revisited and had much the same reaction to many of the characters (Julia Flyte, Celia Ryder etc) as Desdemona had to the Gatsby characters. I also loved this book and the miniseries etc when I was much younger. So perhaps I am just less romantic these days Sniff sniff.

I now moved on to Mystic River. Not much pretty or romantic here so probably will be a good contrast.

_________________formerly known as gwgredux...if you are keeping track.

Yeah, I think what makes Fitzgerald interesting (for me) is that he never really grew up in the sense that he's still writing these fairy tale type love stories as a fully mature writer. He was a man who really believed in the transformative power of romantic love if the nature of his some of his stories is any indication. I mean, when I read the synopsis of Gatsby, it's fairytalesque. Most mature writers aren't going to conceptualize something like that, that's really a sort of naive point of view in the final analysis, in a shallow setting of twenties excess and the unsympathetic idle rich, and bring it to fruition. And he had a rough life, despite the jazz age freewheeling reputation, a hard and long fall in the 1930s that saw a lot of humiliations for him as a writer and his work largely forgotten. What I love about Fitz as a person is that I think he shares with Gatsby what he attributes to JG's character in the book. The "romantic readiness" and endless capacity for hope and whatnot. I think FSF had that as a human being and it came through his writing. I've read The Last Tycoon (his last, unfinished book) and that fanciful type romance is still there with Monroe Stahr,the protagonist in that book and you know, Fitz is a forty-something year old man by then, seasoned and having taken a lot of knocks, and he's still got that hope, he's still got that dream in his writing that love really can conquer all. I remember he wrote to Zelda once a frustrated letter in the last few years of his life: "Please leave me in peace with my hemorrhages and my hopes." I've always thought that says a lot about him right there.

I really enjoyed Always Coming Home, AP. Particularly, I like that she imagines family life in a largely non-hierarchical society totally differently than in The Dispossessed.

I just finished Wild Seed by Octavia Buttler. I realized that I have two of the Patternist series left to read, and then there is no more Octavia Buttler EVER. Book. The worst part is our library does not have these books.

While I wait for the library to deliver comic books and Neal Stephenson to my branch for me, I am trying to read some Jean Genet. It seems like there is a lot of word play, so I would be better off reading it in the original French, but I don't read French. Oh well.

I love all these new Great Gatsby readers! Is the resurgence/your interests in the novel anything to do with the movie? I re-read half of it after coming home from the movie a couple of weeks ago but I still haven't finished it but I've read it a bajillion times awready so no matter. I have a book "College of One" I picked up at the bookstore last week, written by Sheila Graham (FSF's love/companion at the time of his death) and it's about how he educated her, creating a syllabus from books that influenced him, etc. I'm just sort of picking through it, a couple of chapters in. It's not the most fascinating book but a must for FSF minutae lovers, like me

I think part of my desire to (re)read it is to do with your love of FSF! It may have been partially talk of the film (which I haven't seen) - I honestly can't remember. It's just one of those books that so many people have read and know.

_________________A pie eating contest is a battle with no losers. - amandabear

I love all these new Great Gatsby readers! Is the resurgence/your interests in the novel anything to do with the movie? I re-read half of it after coming home from the movie a couple of weeks ago but I still haven't finished it but I've read it a bajillion times awready so no matter. I have a book "College of One" I picked up at the bookstore last week, written by Sheila Graham (FSF's love/companion at the time of his death) and it's about how he educated her, creating a syllabus from books that influenced him, etc. I'm just sort of picking through it, a couple of chapters in. It's not the most fascinating book but a must for FSF minutae lovers, like me

I think part of my desire to (re)read it is to do with your love of FSF! It may have been partially talk of the film (which I haven't seen) - I honestly can't remember. It's just one of those books that so many people have read and know.

Ha! Well, I'm glad it's contagious, but I do apologize if I've influenced anyone at any time to read a book they don't like!

Here's a clip of FSF reading the first three stanzas of Ode to A Nightingale:

Here's a clip of FSF reading the first three stanzas of Ode to A Nightingale:

Interesting. Upthread you mentioned that Fitzgerald had a great fondness for Keats, whose work I have never liked. (NB that having to do an on-the-spot close reading of "Ode to A Nightingale" during my oral comprehensive exam did nothing to endear him to me, and that I'm not a fan of the romantics in general; Wordsworth can be okay, but my loathing for Shelley is virulent. "Mont Blanc" made me want to A. kill myself, B. dig the poet up and kill him, or C. both.) Anyway, while I don't know enough about Keats or Fitzgerald to draw any critically informed parallels, I can't help wondering if my lack of enthusiasm for both writers is rooted in something stylistically and/or thematically related. Maybe there's some connective tissue between the two that I'm responding to without really understanding what it is?

I just checked the liberry website and The Richard Burton Diaries are ready for me to pickup. Woot! I've been waiting for this one. I have to read it in three weeks though because you're not allowed to renew books that have running wait lists (this is a new release and so there are still folks on the waiting list behind me). Three weeks, for me, isn't a lot of time (don't have much time for leisure reading) and I think it's a longish book.

Here's a clip of FSF reading the first three stanzas of Ode to A Nightingale:

Interesting. Upthread you mentioned that Fitzgerald had a great fondness for Keats, whose work I have never liked. (NB that having to do an on-the-spot close reading of "Ode to A Nightingale" during my oral comprehensive exam did nothing to endear him to me, and that I'm not a fan of the romantics in general; Wordsworth can be okay, but my loathing for Shelley is virulent. "Mont Blanc" made me want to A. kill myself, B. dig the poet up and kill him, or C. both.) Anyway, while I don't know enough about Keats or Fitzgerald to draw any critically informed parallels, I can't help wondering if my lack of enthusiasm for both writers is rooted in something stylistically and/or thematically related. Maybe there's some connective tissue between the two that I'm responding to without really understanding what it is?

Yeah, I just think different folks have different tastes. I'm not a massive fan of Keats myself (I think he's brilliant and especially love Grecian Urn and Nightingale--and love reading his letters! but my heart is really with modern poetry and its evolution) and I love Keats' influence on Fitz's work. For me, I see their connection thematically as writers who sort of idealize (people, objects, etc) and then lament/rue the continual gnawing or infringement or impact of reality upon those idealizations.